Garden Update: May 2014

Over the weekend, we helped Zach's mom plant her garden. It is a huge space compared to our tiny patio. We added 54 tomato plants, a handful of peppers, 2 eggplants, a whole row of mammoth sunflowers, celery, beans, raspberries, and broccoli to her existing collection of cabbage, strawberries, zucchinis, and onions. It was a whole day of work under the hot sun. Zach must have moved a whole ton of mulch by himself!

We were tired, sore, and achy when we got done. But look at her garden now! It's beautiful!

On the home front, I have a whole new appreciation for our patio container garden. Since April, we've harvested some chinese veggies and a round of turnips and radishes. In their place, I sowed a round of red choy, kale, and 2 boxes of calendula.

We visited Bennett's Greenhouse and bought ourselves another raspberry shortcake plant. If you ever see this in a nursery and you love raspberries, seriously consider snagging one. They are awesome. You get the sweetest raspberries on a thornless bush that's not only easy to care for, but also super productive and hardy. In addition to that, we also bought a peach sorbet blueberry plant (to replace the one we lost this winter),

a tiny patchouli plant for Zach,

and a lemon verbena for me.

We are still waiting to transplant the tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers that we started from seeds.

And we're also waiting on our beets and carrots to finish up.

We decided that we'd focus our efforts on growing more of the plants we love rather than growing a gazillion varieties of everything like we did last year. So the current plan (though not set in stone!) is for us to not have much more apart from the tarragon,

chocolate mint and orange mint (not pictured),

some new marjoram plants,

fern leaf dill,

kaffir lime that we overwintered indoors,

 cilantro,

 parsley,

Vietnamese shiso,

a small experimental pot of sorrel,

and some other perennial herbs and plants that survived the winter.

What's growing in your garden this May? What are you looking forward to harvesting in the coming months? June, July, and August are always great garden months for us. So even though I don't like the heat of summer, our patio garden gives me plenty to look forward to!

In the meantime, I have a feeling we're going to have some strawberries by the end of the month!

Check our this giant leaf!